


As Though It Never Happened

by akisazame



Category: Yuri!!! on Ice (Anime)
Genre: (Victor Definitely Pines), Compassionate Conspiracies, Gen, M/M, Missing Scene, Social Media, Victor Does Not Pine
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-17
Updated: 2017-03-17
Packaged: 2018-10-06 16:16:38
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,258
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10338842
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/akisazame/pseuds/akisazame
Summary: "Have youseenthese pictures, Vitya?" Chris whines to Victor, who absolutely has seen those pictures, thank you. "Look at my ass in this one! This is probably the best picture ever taken of my ass, and it's stuck here on your phone.""What a shame," Victor says, deadpan.





	

**Author's Note:**

> based on [this tumblr post.](http://bigbigbigtruck.tumblr.com/post/158464139800/i-really-cant-buy-that-yuuri-had-no-idea-how-he) title from Adult Diversion by Alvvays.

It is an unspoken agreement, except for Chris, who speaks about it very loudly.

"Have you _seen_ these pictures, Vitya?" Chris whines to Victor, who absolutely has seen those pictures, thank you. "Look at my ass in this one! This is probably the best picture ever taken of my ass, and it's stuck here on your phone."

"What a shame," Victor says, deadpan, rolling over into Chris and snatching back his phone. They have been spending their last afternoon in Sochi together in Victor's hotel room, looking at pictures from the banquet while Victor definitely absolutely does not moon over Yuuri Katsuki, no matter what Chris says. He takes a moment to consider the picture; it is, in fact, a very good view of Chris's ass. Unfortunately, the picture also includes a mostly nude Yuuri, wrapped sinuously around the pole in the background. If it had only been Chris in frame, Victor might have considered posting it, but he can't even salvage it with a strategic crop. "This was your idea, you know."

"It's the ISU's idea," Chris counters. He cranes his neck so that he can continue peering at the photo of his ass, which tragically will never see the light of Instagram. "Except that it's not the ISU's idea, because if the ISU ever finds out about this, it will mean we have failed in our solemn duty to protect Yuuri Katsuki's honor."

Victor wonders if anyone who can pole dance the way Yuuri did can possibly have any honor left to protect. He does not say this out loud, because it's not about that, really. In the hangover haze of the morning, Victor spent several hours looking more closely into the recent events of Yuuri's career, and it became abundantly clear that the last thing Yuuri needs at this point is a media scandal. Or _another_ media scandal, depending on one's definition of scandal. Victor is long past caring about the media's speculation regarding his own physical and mental health, but he can't keep assuming that everyone adopts his own laissez-faire attitude. Those sort of assumptions have gotten him in trouble far too many times.

"You're mooning again," says Chris.

"Am not," Victor says, because he _wasn't._ He does, however, take the opportunity to look at Yuuri's thigh in the picture again. It is a very nice thigh, Victor thinks. It would have to be, to so completely upstage Chris's ass.

Chris pokes Victor in the side before rolling out from under him so he can retrieve his own phone from the bedside table. "Liar."

\--

("I hate this," Yuuri says, pulling the entire bedspread over his head. "Why are you showing me these?"

"You asked me to show you," Victor replies. He hides his smile behind his phone, even though Yuuri can't possibly see it anyway. Yuuri groans, and Victor considers the Yuuri-shaped lump that is now sharing their hotel room bed. "We don't have to if it's making you uncomfortable."

Yuuri emerges from beneath the bedspread, exhaling dramatically. "No, no, it's fine. It's just... weird? Seeing myself? When I don't remember any of it."

"It was very memorable for the rest of us," Victor assures him. He swipes his finger across his screen to bring up the next picture, then snorts out a laugh. "You'll like this one," he says as he turns the phone around.

Victor watches the movement of Yuuri's eyes and the downturned corners of his mouth, which is how he knows that Yuuri somehow zeros in on the image of himself first, indistinct in the background of the shot. Then he watches Yuuri's whole face crumple into laughter when he notices the actual subject of the picture.

"That," Yuuri manages through a cascade of giggles, "is the best picture of Chris's ass I have ever seen."

Also giggling, Victor flips his phone back around and switches to a text message. "I'm telling him you said that.")

\--

A week and a half after the banquet, Michele Crispino tweets:

 **Michele Crispino** @mickey_crispino  
thinking about taking pole dancing lessons...??

Victor has never gone to DM so fast in his entire life.

 **@v_nikiforov > @mickey_crispino**  
delete that tweet please.

 **@mickey_crispino > @v_nikiforov**  
no one will get the context! i thought you'd like the inside joke

 **@v_nikiforov > @mickey_crispino**  
Yuuri will get the context.

 **@mickey_crispino > @v_nikiforov**  
yuuri's last tweet was four months ago

 **@v_nikiforov > @mickey_crispino**  
delete the tweet or I will DM Sara.

 **@mickey_crispino > @v_nikiforov**  
shit, sorry! deleted it

 **@v_nikiforov > @mickey_crispino**  
thank you.

Victor sets his phone face down on his chest and stares up at the ceiling. He knows full well that Yuuri's last tweet was four months ago, because he has made a private Twitter list for only Yuuri's account. He was checking it hourly for the first few days, but has gotten better about it. A bit. Mostly.

Makkachin whines at him from her spot on the floor, nudging his hand with her muzzle until he gives her a halfhearted pat.

"I'm not mooning," he tells her.

She huffs and grumbles, as if to say 'I don't believe you, but I love you anyway, foolish human.'

Victor's phone buzzes, startling both him and Makkachin. He picks it up and flips it over, holding the phone over his head at arm's length as he reads the notification.

 **Twitter**  
@mickey_crispino mentioned: .@v_nikiforov is scary........

Victor rolls his eyes, then unlocks his phone to compose a response.

\--

("Did Mickey Crispino really make a tweet about pole dancing?" Yuuri asks, apropos of nothing over breakfast one morning.

Victor nearly spits out his coffee. "Where did you hear _that?_ "

"From Phichit," Yuuri says, seemingly unconcerned that his coach-slash-fiance is choking to death on a hot beverage. "He told me he saw it and then two minutes later it was gone. Then there was a tweet about how you're scary, and you replied..."

"'Only when provoked,'" Victor manages to say. Halfway through Yuuri's retelling of the story, Victor's choking had turned to laughter, which was roughly the same physical response. "With a smiley face after it."

"I didn't have any context for it at the time," Yuuri goes on. There's the beginning of a blush on his cheeks, and he suddenly becomes very interested in the pattern on the tablecloth. "But I just figured it out."

The Victor of a week and a half after the Grand Prix Final banquet, who had definitely not been mooning over Yuuri, had not thought anything of Mickey's dejected tweet and his own flippant response. The Victor of now, who knows how intensely Yuuri had mooned over him, realizes that the entirety of Victor Nikiforov's social media presence had been painstakingly scrutinized.

The Yuuri of now leans across the table and kisses Victor's forehead. "You _are_ a little scary."

Victor pouts. "Only when provoked.")

\--

Victor is sitting on a bench in the practice rink, fully engrossed in his phone, when Yuri Plisetsky smacks him upside the head.

"Ow," Victor says without looking up.

"Let me post one," Yuri says.

It's been four months since the Grand Prix Final. Yuri has been hounding Victor about posting pictures from the banquet at least once a week for the entire four months.

"No one's going to care anymore," Yuri goes on, crossing his arms and trying to look nonchalant. Like he's trying to pretend that he doesn't care about this thing he's been hung up about for four straight months. Not that Victor can relate. "Katsuki's probably retiring anyway. What difference does it make?"

There have been a lot of rumors about Yuuri's retirement. Victor knows about all of them because he set up a Google Alert for "Yuuri Katsuki" at the same time he set up his private Twitter list. Every single rumor makes Victor's heart do something strange and unexpected in his chest, and Yuri's mention is no different. Yuri's argument makes a depressing amount of sense: if Yuuri retires, he can't get in trouble with the ISU. Or, he could, but it wouldn't mean much of anything. But still, after four months of keeping the whole incident under wraps, Victor is reluctant to let it go.

And it's not because he's _mooning,_ dammit. It's nothing like that.

Victor looks up from his phone. His smile is beatific. "I'm not sure why you're so impatient to share pictures of yourself losing a dance battle, kitten."

Yuri huffs and looks away. "I wasn't going to share _those._ "

"Gonna share the ones where you look cool, Yura?" Mila's voice cuts in. Victor hadn't noticed her approach; she sidles up next to Yuri and throws an arm around his shoulders. Yuri wilts like a flower. "Save your time. I've seen all those pictures and you don't look cool in a single one."

"No one asked you, old hag," Yuri says, shrugging Mila off and marching towards the locker room.

Mila perches next to Victor on the bench, looking very pleased with herself. Victor's attention returns to his phone; the mention of the banquet pictures has led him to open his photo album without thinking. He has several pictures of Yuuri marked as favorites, and he taps one of them to bring it into full view. Yuri is in this one too, but Victor only has eyes for Yuuri, bright and smiling and beautiful.

"You're mooning," Mila says, bumping her shoulder against Victor's companionably.

Victor doesn't say anything.

\--

("Oh no," Yuuri says, and the way his voice pitches up at the end is instantly recognizable to Victor. "Oh _no._ "

Victor rolls over in bed to see Yuuri staring at his phone in abject terror. "Yuuri, we've talked about this. No news sites for one week after competitions or after 11pm. This is a double violation."

"It's not a news site." Yuuri turns the phone around so Victor can see that it is not, in fact, a news site. It is, in fact, Yuri Plisetsky's Instagram page.

It is, in fact, a collage of approximately 30 images from the Sochi Grand Prix Final banquet.

"I'm going to crawl under the bed and die now," Yuuri says.

Yuuri's phone drops in Victor's lap as Yuuri slithers off the side of the bed, presumably to go under it and die. Victor figures he has a minute or two to survey the damage before he has to rescue his husband, so he picks up the phone to examine the collage in more detail. Every picture is of Yurio, zoomed in and cropped; just as Mila had insinuated, he'd only posted the pictures where he looked the coolest. Victor has to squint at the image and blow it up to twice its size before he finds the parts that Yuuri found objectionable: a Yuuri-arm here, a Yuuri-leg there, and one or two Yuuri-faces that Yurio had either failed to crop out or had left in out of malice.

There is a mournful whine, which is Victor's cue to set the phone aside and retrieve his husband. He sits down cross-legged on the floor and peers underneath the bed, where Yuuri has managed to wedge himself. "Please don't die under the bed, my love," Victor says, holding out his hand to Yuuri.

"Why would Yurio do this to me?" Yuuri grouses even as he takes Victor's hand and lets himself be extricated from beneath the bed. "Why does Yurio _hate_ me?"

"Yurio doesn't hate you," Victor says, tugging Yuuri to sit in his lap. "He just don't know how to express his love the way I do." As a demonstration, Victor kisses Yuuri's ear, then his neck, then his cheek. Yuuri turns his head and kisses Victor's lips, which distracts Victor for a little while.

"Still," Yuuri says later, when they're back in bed and Victor has forgotten the conversation entirely, "why would he post the pictures now? That banquet was two years ago."

Horror dawns on Victor. Yuuri's front is pressed to Victor's back, which leaves Victor unhindered to pick up his phone from the bedside table. Just as he suspected, there's a text message from Yurio.

 **Yuri Plisetsky 22:57**  
statute of limitations, asshole

Victor sets his phone back down on the table, face down. "I have no idea.")

\--

"Ground rules," Chris says, fingers poised over his phone screen. "I'm going to message everyone. If we're doing this, we have to be on the same page."

Victor pushes his bangs back from his face, as though the gesture can also push away all the memories of Yuuri himself. He holds up his other hand, counting off on his fingers. "No shared videos. No shared pictures. This means privately as well as publicly. No talking to the media, obviously. No talking about it in public spaces. No talking about it at all would be ideal, but..." Victor gestures between himself and Chris.

"Right," Chris agrees. His nails click rhythmically against the glass of his phone. "Anything else? How long are we agreeing to this?"

Victor hums, considering. "Forever?"

Chris tilts his head, frowns. "Vitya, please. The world cannot be forever deprived of that picture of my ass."

"Fine, fine," Victor says, waving his hand dismissively. "Every involved party consents, or two years have elapsed, whichever comes first." He is confident that, two years from now, Chris will have forgotten all about that picture of his ass.

"Message sent." Chris tosses his phone aside on the bed, then rolls over into Victor's space. "Now, what's the statute of limitations on you sending a text to that sweet boy you're mooning over?"

"I am not _mooning,_ " Victor insists, as he moons at a picture of Yuuri Katsuki.

**Author's Note:**

> come drown in the depth of gay skating hell with me at [akisazame.tumblr.com](http://akisazame.tumblr.com)


End file.
